The process that will turn the once grand company into something far less significant began Monday with the spinoff of AT&T Wireless. The company will soon ask its shareholders to break up what remains into three separate entities -- broadband, business services and consumer long-distance -- as it tries to cope with growing debt and punishing competition.

Less than two decades ago, AT&T was the nation's biggest phone company. It not only controlled long-distance service, it owned the nation's largest local phone companies. To generations of Americans, it was Ma Bell.

Even after the company was forced to spin off its local phone divisions in 1984, it was still a powerful corporate force. But changing technology and growing competition have gradually eliminated its edge.

"The AT&T as we have known it will be gone soon," said Gary Jacobi, a telecommunications analyst with Deutsche Bank Alex Brown in New York. "The world changed far faster than AT&T could adapt, and now it's paying the price."

AT&T stock, which rose $1.98 a share Monday to close at $18.70, is trading at about half its 52-week high of $35.18. During the first quarter of this year, the company lost 46 cents a share.

Under AT&T's breakup plan, its consumer business -- which contains its residential long-distance phone operation -- and AT&T Business Services, which deals with commercial customers, will become independent companies.

But Jacobi said the residential long-distance business' revenues have been falling, and neither the residential and business divisions are large enough to compete nationally.

The death of Ma Bell began on Monday."With the splitting off of AT&T Wireless, AT&T can no longer put on the brakes on a course that will lead to the end of the company," said Robert Saunders, a telecommunications analyst with The Eastern Management Group in Bedminster, N.J.

AT&T tried mightily to avoid the breakup. Several years ago, it spent more than $100 billion to cobble together the biggest cable television business in the country. Its goal was far grander than providing TV service -- it hoped to use the coaxial connections into the American home to re-establish the direct link that it lost with the Baby Bells.

If the company's plan had worked, the cable network would have delivered high-speed Internet connections, telephone service and a wide array of video products.

"The company wanted to bundle all its services together and deliver them through the cable connection," Jacobi said. "It didn't work."

But as AT&T spent, the Baby Bells pushed to get into long-distance service. Other long-distance carriers also gained ground, and AT&T's long-distance business shrank.

"Faced with a deteriorating business, AT&T opted to abandon its plan and sell off its assets," said Michael Goodman, an analyst with the Yankee Group in Boston. "The company had overpromised and couldn't deliver."

Goodman said that the spinoff of the wireless and broadband divisions will leave AT&T with a sagging long-distance business that probably won't be able to carry on by itself. He said an independent long-distance business would probably become a takeover target for a larger telephone company.

"If AT&T did a better job of managing investor expectations, there would have been a potential for their plan," Goodman said. "Maybe what has happened was simply a failure to make a strategy work."